Content management or Web content management (WCM) systems and applications provide authoring tools designed to allow software developers to create, edit, store, organize and/or publish web or web-based content using a development “page” or “application” editor. Some content management tools attempt to group these processes in large, monolithic architectures. Some WCM systems use a database or other content repository to store content, metadata, and/or other information that may be needed by the WCM system. In many instances, these approaches require an organization to adopt proprietary languages and environments that are managed and used by skilled personnel, software designers and developers.
In general, WCM systems are used to manage and control large, dynamic collections of web-based material (e.g., Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents, PHP documents, images, etc.). A WCM system generally facilitates document control, editing, and timeline management. For instance, a typical WCM system can provide one or more of the following features: automated templates, easily editable content, workflow management, document management, and content virtualization, among others. A WCM system provide software developers and designers with tools that allow for the creation of attractive and well-designed application user-interfaces, web pages and/or websites with uniform or related layouts.
Many large organizations, such as corporate entities, provide a multiplicity of web sites to the public and internally throughout the organization. These organizations may involve different business or organization units that span diverse areas of expertise. For these and other practical reasons, smaller functional or operational groups within an organization often use different web sites or user interfaces to communicate unique information. Large organizations often require large numbers of trained and skilled technical personnel to have responsibility for adding, editing, and removing content on web sites or software application user interfaces. Thus, the ability to create web sites and software application user interfaces and, further, to update and maintain them without significant training requirements, and to allow for centralized sharing and administration of multiple web sites or software user interfaces within an enterprise would be useful.
There is a need in the industry to enable not only developers and designors to be able to create, edit, and maintain web pages and software application graphical user interfaces (GUIs), but also to provide end users with the ability to do the same. Preferably, the rights to create, edit, and maintain such web pages and software application user interfaces is granted to users, but at levels that are controlled and restricted based on authorization, permissions, and/or security levels unique to each user. Further, some users need to be able to grant further rights (to the same or lesser extent as their own rights) to other end users.